The team at Wolters Kluwer HQ sits down with Mary Zachariah, Head of Content for CCH iKnowConnect’s Tax & Accounting solution, to discuss what she joined Wolters Kluwer APAC, and her experience working with the team.
Tell us about your role at Wolters Kluwer
I am a manager in the content solutions business division of Wolters Kluwer. This means I oversee a team of content specialists who are tax writers and editors. We are responsible for creating the content within our flagship research platform, CCH iKnowConnect.
What would you say are some of your biggest motivators at work?
When I first started in Wolters Kluwer as a tax writer it was a bit of a dream job for me because I was able to combine my love for writing with the technical knowledge I gained at university in tax law. As context, my first few jobs were as a tax advisor.
A role like this opened different opportunities for me and showed me you don't always have to work in public practice, so discovering that when I was young in my career was really exciting.
It still motivates me today because I now get to direct the team and shape the content that we give our customers. Plus, at the end of the day, we are helping accountants and lawyers, so that's always rewarding and motivating.
What do you think makes our company different from others you have worked for?
Before I started at Wolters Kluwer, I was mostly in public practice and then spent time working in some of the bigger firms. Whilst those bigger firms are global brands, they don't tend to operate as a global business.
Coming to Wolters Kluwer, especially now, I feel like we are really part of a global business. We get to leverage technology and ideas from people outside of Australia, whether it's America or Europe. I think that's quite cool and different from what I have experienced before.
Tell us, what work are you most proud of and why?
One of the things I'm particularly proud of is that we've run some really fun campaigns over the years around our flagship books. In particular, a few years ago we ran a campaign, called “I Heart Master Tax Guide”. We had customers take photos with their copy of their Australian Master Tax Guide and send it to us in the hope of winning a prize. There were so many wonderful customers telling us how much our Australian Master Tax Guide meant to them and how it's important in their everyday work. Having us work on that product every year and see our customers’ appreciation for that is very rewarding.
It's also really very rewarding to actually see our customers downloading and using the content they need every day from our digital research platforms. We always get to see the statistics around how many people have read or downloaded something we’ve put together, so that's really fulfilling. And of course, when we get good feedback from our customers, we're very happy to hear that.
How about during the pandemic in 2020 when lockdowns began? How did the team adapt then?
Yeah, I think Wolters Kluwer really showed its true colors during the pandemic. It was one of the most challenging times and the amount of content we worked on and provided to our customers for free when people couldn't access their offices was incredible.
The business showed its real attitude at that time when people were really struggling, which I am really proud of until this day.
What values are important to you, and how do you experience those values at Wolters Kluwer?
One of our values at Wolters Kluwer is that we are very customer focused, which sits close to my heart.
But we’re not only focused on the customer, we're driven by the customer. For example, anytime we're making a change in our team or someone's talking about a change, our brain just switches to: ‘What is the impact on the customer?’. That's the first thing we think about. That's one of the things I find really refreshing here.
What encourages you to stay in Wolters Kluwer?
Hand on heart, I would say that we get work-life balance in this role. I think many accountants and lawyers may find that difficult in their normal practice, but I really can say that we achieve that here.
We get to work quite independently as well because we're managing a set of content, so you see a lot of pride and ownership in what you do. Our team also tends to hang around a long time so we've grown in our careers together and we're a lot like a family, which it's lovely.